/soy/ - Soyjaks

STORYTIME THREAD
When I was a little kid, the school had me repeatedly tested to see where my IQ was but couldn't pin it down because I refused to complete the tests, so they just marked it as "at least 135" and put me into some sort of state controlled gifted program with additional monitoring.

The school then referred me to a specialist, and my parents would drive me very far to go see a special doctor. I liked it because the doctors would just watch me while I built Legos, and then we'd do some logic exercises that I enjoyed. There was always a counseling session attached to it as well where one doctor would ask questions and the other would take notes. I vividly remember being particularly interested in the fact that they had gold Legos, and the doctors wanted me to incorporate them into what I built- a task that I now recognize as testing to see how I handled off-nomimal instructions.

I always had fun because afterward, my dad would take me to Pizza Hut for the buffet, and the doctors would occasionally give me hot wheels cars.

Then, on the advice of these doctors, they took me to an experimental place where they hooked me up to machines to measure my brainwaves and try to "fix" my brain performance through a combination of lights, sounds, sensors, and shocks.

I had to go to this training where they would strap me into an (admittedly comfortable) chair for two hours with sensors all over my head, and I would get a mild shock every time I lost focus, and they would try to use sounds and abstract images projected onto a screen in front of me to try to help me "improve my brain activity". I would regularly complete tests and cognitive exercises as part of this.

I went there for about a year before it stopped. I asked why and all my parents said was that "it's a government program and the government doesn't want to pay for it anymore"

I don't really know how this all impacted me because I almost immediately buried all memory of it. I didn't regain memory of it until almost 14 years later now.

Now, I seem to remember it once per year around mind November. I don't know why.

To this day, I still don't know who any of those people were, what their jobs were, or what the purpose was. My dad remembers taking me, but all he says is "they never really told me anything"